[Simh] Older Model VAX simulators, what can you do with them and how do they work?

[Henry Bent]

Mark is right, just RTFM.  But as far as Unix goes here's a brief mix of my
experience, my memory, and very quickly looking through some sources:

4.2BSD kernel conf has settings for the 780, 750, and 730, and the generic
kernel ought to boot on any of those.  4.1C BSD has the same kernel conf
settings as 4.2 (no surprise there).  Vanilla 4.1 looks like it will only
support the 780, so anything earlier will definitely only run on a 780.
4.3 has 8600/8650 support and has MicroVAX II support but it's not in the
generic kernel, so you'd probably have to roll your own installation tape
to install from scratch.  4.3-Reno has a KA650 config option so it might
boot on a 3900 but no promises.

The Ultrix 1.0 manuals specifically mention the 780, 750, and 730, which is
no surprise because it's basically 4.2BSD with some add-ons.  Ultrix-32M
1.0 boots only on the MicroVAX I.  Ultrix 1.2 added support for the
8600/8650 and I believe Ultrix-32M 1.1 or 1.2 added support for the
MicroVAX II.  Support for the 3900 was added in, ah... looks like maybe
Ultrix 3.0?  Or a 3.0 patch?

-Henry

On 9 October 2016 at 21:34, Mark Pizzolato <Mark at infocomm.com> wrote:

> On Sunday, October 9, 2016 at 4:58 PM, Johnny Billquist wrote:
> > Oh, and another comment. More general, but anyway...
> >
> > DEC did not really expect that tapes would be booted from on VAXen, so
> they
> > did not provide any standard way to boot in this way. For the
> > VAX-11/780 for example, if you got VMS on tape, you were expected to boot
> > a small standalone version of BACKUP from floppies, and then do the
> restore
> > of the tape from this environment.
> >
> > The VAX-11/750 had a similar thing with the standalong backup environment
> > on DECtape II.
> >
> > However, MicroVAXen reintroduced booting from tape, as the TK50 became
> > widespread, and the only removable storage on many of those machines. (I
> > say reintroduced, since PDP-11s usually always included the ability to
> boot
> > from tape.)
> >
> > So the approach of not being able to boot from tape, that DEC decided on
> for
> > the early VAXen, is a bit unfortunate, since it does make these kind of
> things
> > extra hard, if you are not using VMS.
> >
> > And this is why doc sets like MtXinu provided this information in their
> > manuals, and why the instructions consist of writing actual code into
> memory
> > to do the booting from tape.
>
> As I vaguely recall, MtXinu didn't come into existence until after 4.x BSD
> Unix
> and when that happened, the VAX 11/750 certainly was a supported system.
>
> Meanwhile, Ray's original question was about installing 3BSD, which I think
> may have existed before the VAX 11/750 was available/supported...
>
> Of course, my memory is vague at best.  In any case, the installation
> instructions for the original OS distribution would be the relevant place
> to look.
>
> - Mark
>
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